


Your Eyes are Full of Language

by Chromi



Category: One Piece
Genre: Body Horror, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Forensics, Hallucinations, I Don't Even Know, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Non-Graphic Violence, Other, POV First Person, Pathologists, Prompt Fill, Psychological Horror, Psychosis, Sort Of, The Author Regrets Nothing, a bit - Freeform, the relationship is like... as loose as can possibly be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:07:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22319869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromi/pseuds/Chromi
Summary: "Allow me to add, for the records, my identity. For this I know well, as he is me. I am Marco Newgate, forensic pathologist, as you well know also. You announced my name upon my arrival, after all. You, dear reader, looked over my files and immediately knew me as well as I know myself in material form. You do not know my mind.Ido not know my mind. Nor do I knowhis."Challenge 1! Scene: stage, kink: identity porn.
Relationships: Akagami no Shanks | Red-Haired Shanks/Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco
Comments: 11
Kudos: 21
Collections: Happy Hornings!





	Your Eyes are Full of Language

**Author's Note:**

> Scene: Stage  
> Kink: identity porn
> 
> And this turned out to... include these in the loosest possible manner. An autopsy lab room's a stage, right? *sweats*
> 
> I had a whole bunch of ideas for this setup, but the majority needed a lot of time and backstory sdfsdd.
> 
> I legitimately don't even know what this is lmao. I wrote it in a frenzy in about 2.5 hours.
> 
> Please, as always, pay attention to the tags.

Now this, I must confess, is an entirely new process for me. A personal one, if I may be so honest, and not of the kind I am used to. Speaking in the first person is unnerving for one such as myself, where usually naught lies but the facts and the figures and the calm curve of pen to paper that narrates my findings rather than my thoughts. But you _asked_ for this, did you not? You summoned me and addressed me by title before leaving me to pour out my heart and delve not into evidence, but into the murky marshes of the mind instead. This is not my field; not my field at all. Nevertheless, I shall attempt to entertain you through the dull drudge of the mundane, and perhaps even begin to make sense of what I experienced that day.

I cannot say that I expect to find myself successful in this endeavor.

Allow me to add, for the records, my identity. For this I know well, as he is me. I am Marco Newgate, forensic pathologist, as you well know also. You announced my name upon my arrival, after all. You, dear reader, looked over my files and immediately knew me as well as I know myself in material form. You do not know my mind. _I_ do not know my mind. Nor do I know his.

The day you ask me to describe began as any other. My assistant, still relatively fresh out of med school, finally in his first placement away from the bores of the microbiology lab of the local hospital, brought coffee to me at my desk. “The higher–ups have brought in a big case,” he was excited to tell me, clearly jittery and nervous, “something huge, they said.”

I paid him little heed. He called almost every case _huge_ or _spectacular_ , for he was a junior with little true experience. I, on the other hand, have been doing this for too long to remember at this point. I have seen it all–– or at least, that was what I had thought. Every homicide I had investigated rolled into one long tiresome report in my mind, each a slog through mud toward a final verdict that yes, indeed, the killer had done all of the killing and no, not one of the victims dropped dead of their own accord or via natural causes.

This was to be no different.

A murder, I was informed when the body was wheeled in. A murder that was not being publicised yet; no news reporters accompanied this body, no story travelled with it into my examination room, and whispered guesses of 'whodunnit' reached no further than a vague, confused shrug. Odd, I found it. Why, you ask? Of course you do. The prattle, the gossip, the hordes of public who wish to gossip like hens pecking one another permeates every case I have ever come across, slipping into my chambers like a smoke bomb launched through a window. Dull, repetitive, and simply not to my tastes, I can assure you. I frequently requested that my assistant shut his damn mouth to the suspicions that he carried and voiced throughout examination and reporting, not one ever proving to be correct, I am happy to confirm.

Silly boy.

But I digress.

Allow me, briefly, to give you an account of the body that was lifted onto my table. Or rather, if you may forgive my scattered thoughts (for they _are_ scattered, much like dust blown into high winds, as I cannot easily collect them under the circumstances you have seated me), let me first detail why I was not summoned to the scene of the crime that saw this individual killed. First you must understand that when there is a murder, or a homicide, as I document it, the forensic pathologist is called to the scene of the crime along with the police and the medics. This is routine; this is how it goes. You see, you _must_ understand, surely, that in order to piece together the picture as perfectly as humanely possible, you must attend the scene, no? So this is what we do. This is what my assistant will do when he reaches my level. It is what the esteemed Professor Keith Simpson did. And yet, knowing this as all we within the field do, I was not to attend the scene.

Why, though? Why not I?

The circumstances are beyond strange, and you may well not believe me, but it is as true as my name or my birth, I assure you this.

See, this body turned up _within the forensic department._ From nowhere. I kid you not. I am not joking. Ask anyone – anyone at all! It appeared from seemingly nowhere, discovered on the floor of the lobby by the receptionist who screamed for help and was subsequently sent home due to shock. A hideous sight it was for her, and quite as hideous for myself and my assistant when I unzipped the body bag that it had been stuffed into.

A man, that much was evident. Tall, approximately two inches shorter than myself, of a strong, solid build.

And that is as far as I am able to accurately describe his identity.

Now please, do not recoil when I recount the state of the body that I was presented with on that fine, beautiful spring morning. Do not forget, as others do so easily, that this is my _job_ and as such it is normal to see severe injuries of the likes that would make a weaker stomach curdle and heave. For the sake of accurate documentation, I will describe to the best of my ability, as always.

The man's eyes had been gouged out entirely, as if scooped clean away. The skin around them – the eyelids, the entirety of the nose, the eyebrows and the face as far back as the ears – had been burned so severely that his skull sparkled through charred flesh at me under the harsh lights overhead. Three deep cuts parallel to one another marred what remained of his left cheek. His teeth were all gone, pulled rather inelegantly and in a hurry, I surmised, given the state of destruction to the gums. His hair had been crudely sheared, yet enough stubble remained that we could tell he had been a redhead. The fingertips were gone in an act of violence of the likes we had never actually seen, only read about, and upon reaching the feet we discovered the same story there. The tips of all phalanges had been hacked away at the first knuckle, leaving us with no means of identifying him through fingerprints. We suspect that this reasoning applied to why his tongue was removed, too.

I begged my assistant not to faint – instead he vomited into the sink behind us. It was the smell, I think, that did it for him. The smell of burned flesh and of fetid, congealing blood. You must understand, of course, that all in this field and at this level are accustomed to the stench of death and blood. We are not, however, familiar with the odor of flame–grilled human meat.

Nonetheless, we set to work on the body. Hair and skin samples were sent on to the labs for analysis so that we may identify the man. For the time being, we had no means to identify and name.

And thus, dear reader of my report, is how we came to colloquially refer to him as Charred. Cruel, is it not? Definitely.

The unknown man rested heavy in my mind throughout lunch, well into dinner, and still further when I arrived home at long last. The examination had not revealed anything of note, other than the obvious extensive cruelties that he had suffered. Each organ had been removed, weighed, and examined, as standard. My assistant had documented while I dictated, scribbling furiously before snapping his pencil in his haste. There was nothing noteworthy at all – no indication towards heart failure of any description, be it cardiac arrest or heart disease. There was no suggestion of bleeding from any orifice or incision. Nothing untoward had happened within the liver, the kidneys, the lungs, the stomach or the intestines. All was as it should have been – no injuries to speak of, no illnesses bearing scars or inflammation or adhesions. Nothing, I assure you! Aside from the plainly obvious injuries documented above, he was fit as a fiddle.

Or verdict was, at last, drawn to a close over his injuries. Loss of eyes, I wanted to write in a sudden flash of dark humor, and baked across the face. My assistant did not find this amusing.

Now, we reach the point in my tale where you will begin to raise your brows in amazement and finally, at last, understand why it is here in this facility that I am writing from, rather than my own desk in my office. A mistake, I can promise you now without doubt – a mistake that I myself would have made under different circumstances. But I can confirm without a shadow of a doubt that I am quite sane, oh yes! As sane as I was before all of this started, and quite certainly as sane as ever I was. You must believe me – you must learn from my account that all was well within my mind and that I do not hold pleasure in perverting the truth in any form. What I write is correct, even if it may seem as unlikely and deranged as unicorns or aliens.

You see, that night I could not sleep. He plagued my thoughts unlike any other case before him. The cold–blooded killer who had murdered the school children – the massacre of the elderly in their own nursing home – the incident of the father asphyxiating his three children and wife before shooting himself in the head – not one of these commanded my thoughts so completely as Charred did. What power he held over me! What questions he gave rise to; what desperation I held to uncover the truth! A man who so rightly should have still been alive, by all forensic accounts, yet was not! One could survive the loss of one's eyes, after all. Brutality does not, as we all know, necessarily mean death. Think of torture; think of pain! I certainly did for long, silent hours into the night.

Unable to sleep, I took myself downstairs for a drink. You must know of the type I mean. A nightcap to settle the nerves that the likes of Propranolol had been ineffective against. I was turning to head back to bed when I saw it.

There, on my kitchen counter.

Face-up and goading, almost, in its obvious intention to be found.

A photograph – one of those old Polaroids, if you remember the like – of Charred.

Charred, as he had been on my table, laid prone and bare, abdomen open and organs removed, eyes gone and face burned, a perfect image of what we had witnessed earlier in the day.

But how? I asked myself the question repeatedly as my fingers shook, holding the photo to my face in the dark. How, pray tell, had this found its way into my _home?_ My assistant, ever diligent, had taken photographs throughout the stages of the autopsy, as was customary. But certainly he had not slipped one into a pocket of mine for a joke – he is not the unprofessional type – and I, most definitely, did not bring evidence home with me for any reasons, unlike some others in the field. No – this was not possible. The fact that the photo existed, that I was holding it between fingers suddenly slick with sweat, fuelled by a heart that thundered – I may well have moaned in shock. I do not know.

I lit a match, the box of the damn things located in the back of a drawer kept only for emergencies. I set it alight, and with an intrusive, damning thought I realised that this was the second time that Charred had been burned. The photograph wrinkled in the sink basin when dropped, and the evidence was turned to ash.

Why did I burn it, you wonder? You must be thinking along those lines right now. Why did I not simply slip it into my wallet, or my work jacket pocket, and take it back to the lab with me the following day? When had I _ever_ destroyed evidence before? Never. But I implore you understand my state of mind at the time. I was terrified, I am almost proud to admit; wholly terrified and quite rightly confused.

I took myself back to bed with my drink in hand, hoping against hope that it would stifle the panic and soothe the nerves enough to allow me to sleep in peace.

It did not.

For upon my return to bed, there lay another photo on my pillow.

Fear seeped into me like an intravenous drug, numbing my extremities and organs alike. I picked up the photo with hands that did not wish to cooperate. How had it got there? Really, please, I ask of you, _how_ did this arrive to sit neatly at my pillow that I had only recently vacated? I couldn't answer this, and I surely still cannot.

This photo was again of Charred, but not as I had seen him before. It _had_ to be him; there was no mistaking it, despite never having seen him in this state. Uninjured, whole, and smiling; red, thick hair hung around a handsome face that housed deep, soulful eyes under intact eyelids. Not a burn in sight; each tooth seated firmly within his smiling mouth.

Had I not been shook to my core and on the verge of shouting out in confused horror at this second discovery, I might have appreciated just _how_ handsome he was. My type, absolutely, with a chiseled jaw and stubble lining it. The kind of man who I would watch with hunger across a bar under any other circumstances, I am sure, and without a doubt the type who would successfully intimidate my assistant.

But the pressing matter was how this had come to haunt me in my home. How this tied with the first; how it existed where it shouldn't.

You believe me a fanciful liar, don't you? Perhaps wait for the full story to unfold before casting aspersions – make it worth your while. I can see how I may come across as a vile storyteller as this unfolds, but please, do check my records, my assessments conducted by HR – I am true and plain and speak nothing but facts, as always.

For you see, I once again burned the picture in a fit of roiling, gripping panic. I then searched my house, turning on all of the lights and even shining the torch of my phone under my bed, the guest bed in the spare room, the closets, the cupboards. Safe to say, I was satisfied that no one was in my home with me.

Which, again, gave rise to the furious, shouted question of _why_. Why was this happening? From where did they come from?

I returned to bed yet again, rightly scared of what I may find.

I found nothing.

I eventually fell asleep – the hours of tossing and turning and straining to listen for any sounds within the house are not worthy of documenting, for nothing happened.

Now, I have tried to convince myself that I managed to fall asleep at around two in the morning. I tell myself this because I do not think there is any feasible way I could have functioned the next day without sleeping, and yet I still rolled into the lab like a reanimated corpse, having successfully established during my drive through the morning traffic that the events of the night before had been the results of stress. After all, I had reminded myself, when having breakfast there had been no evidence of the photographs being burned in the sink. I do not recall washing the remnants away but rather leaving the curling black remains to sit like crow feathers where they fluttered, their removal not even remotely a priority in my state of anxiety the night previous.

And now – oh, you _will_ laugh at this next part! – we get to the lewd section of the story. I will continue to tell it in detail, as ever, but you, dear reviewer of my case, may wish to skip it. Or not. Whatever suits your desires.

I knew my assistant was playing a cruel, heinous trick on me the moment I set foot into the lab that morning. Charred was not out and ready for the second round of examination that we had agreed on the day before, having mutually decided that there must have been something that we missed. My assistant, a man much younger and notoriously not the type to joke or to be _silly_ in the workplace, was clearly trying to change that reputation today. He insisted quite out of the blue, drowning out my increasingly frantic demands, that Charred had never existed, would you believe. That yesterday had been a national holiday, and that neither of us had been to work! He expected me to believe that? What a part from tradition – what a switch from his usual formal, straight–laced self! He expected me to play along, to agree that no, the biggest and most confusing case of our lives had _never existed?_ Maddening. Insane.

See, _he_ is the one who is insane, not I. I told you. I told you the moment you cuffed me that he was the one. But you did not listen. Examine my portfolio – learn of my history and my findings, for _I_ am to be believed. I, who have worked on all of the top profile cases since the start of my career! I can be traced, kind fool, and I can produce receipts of my candor.

This is, I confess, the most abstract part of my account, and I implore you believe me, if you have decided to read on. For when my ridiculous assistant turned to wash his hands in the basin, I felt – and I can hardly write for recounting this – hands at my hips. The press of something hard to my behind. And the gentle pressure of a broad chest to my back.

With a sharp, nervous stutter of a breath I felt those hands at my hips unbuckle my belt; I felt them unzip me, pull down my pants, and touch me intimately. Right there, my hands splayed at my examination table, in the hold of an unknown assailant! I gasped for my assistant to notice, to turn, to _help_ , but he did nothing of the sort.

I was fingered roughly, shaking and confused, yet my body obstinately refused to work with me to throw off my attacker. I cried out upon being entered proper; I thought I would be sick. There was no escaping it – there was no moving of my muscles or cooperation of my physical self to catch up with my brain that _screamed_ for help. Who was it? Who could have possibly rendered me incapacitated to such an extent? Was this another of my assistant's jokes? For he did nothing to intervene, not even when he finished at the sink and turned back to me, smiling uncertainly and holding a tray of instruments for cutting and peeling and slicing and _finding_. There was I, getting fucked, if you may allow me to write such a word in a formal report, over my own table, and he _smiled_ like nothing was amiss!

But what was wrong – what was so horribly, sickeningly, _disastrously_ wrong beyond all manner of comprehension was _who_ was holding me, who was hitting every nerve so precise I began to shake with more than just fear.

I managed to turn to look at him.

I saw not eyes, but burned, blackened sockets with shards of skull glinting through like stardust.

And a great, gaping smile that contained not a single tooth.

I screamed. I twisted. I wretched and I vomited, and yet my assistant did nothing. He continued setting up for an autopsy that neither of us would ever perform! He did not care, he did not _see_ , that his senior colleague was in fact getting raped by the corpse of the man he had seen dead on that very table 24 hours ago!

Absurd! Complete madness! And yet here I am, recalling the tale!

I bit through my lip – you may examine me and confirm this, the wound is readily present for inspection! – as I finally found my strength. I lunged for my assistant, the rage and sheer shock of the situation driving me to him. He startled, he _finally_ reacted to something that was happening! Momentarily overcome with joy that yes, this was _real,_ he _could_ see me standing there with a dead man wrapped around me, I made to grasp him by the shoulders. Yet for some obscure reason I stopped, and I stared, and my blood ran colder than ice left to crystallize in the void of space.

The eyes of Charred stared back at me from my assistant's face – those eyes that I had seen the night previous, in the second Polaroid! Eyes of deep walnut brown – I remember them precisely – beautiful and currently shining with fear so acute I could verily feel my heart _exploding_ with love for them.

I snatched up a scalpel from the tray beside me. I took it to my assistant's terrified face and I carved from him those eyes, _those eyes that stared into my soul_. He flailed, he grabbed at my neck, my face, but he couldn't win! He would never win! He had refused to help – refused to acknowledge – refused to see how Charred _still stood_ there, laughing, braying, encouraging and calling for me to return to him what— yes! The mystery was solved, at last!

The eyes of Charred, returned in the bloodied fist that shook with adrenaline!

Charred, whose identity had evaded us so completely, whole again thanks to my assistant's sacrifice, thanks to my hard work!

You should have seen the look on my face when he plunged his eyes back to where they belonged – you should have _seen_ , dear reader, my _astonishment_ when at last I recognised the face of my deceased lover!

...My assistant was responsible; do you not see? No, please, do allow me to explain. My assistant, who joined my team in the same month as my partner passed away due to unknown circumstances. He stole his eyes; he kept them for himself. The evidence all points to him, does it not? A clever ruse; a tale of deception, you understand.

Is he dead? Did my assistant die? One can live without their eyes, after all; we have established this. Did he bleed out? Did it hurt? Did he scream as I pulled his teeth out to return to my beloved? Did he squirm and sob when I removed his fingers and toes, collecting them to offer back where they belonged?

I am not to blame. You would do the same. You, I am sure, are as rational a person as I.


End file.
